2018: Our year in review

When we wrapped up 2017, we had no idea what 2018 would have in store. As our 10 years anniversary was coming up, we had a slight idea that it would be something different.Yet this year was a ride beyond what we have ever hoped for.Here are the highlights:

• The biggest event this year was our 10th anniversary. To mark the special occasion, we took a moment to look back on 10 fun memories from 10 years of Qubiz, 10 business snapshots and 10 things we learned along the way.
• A year to remember needs a party to remember. So we celebrated our big anniversary with legendary Summer Camp. Together with our partners and families, we sang, danced, played the drums, painted and partied till dawn. And it was loads of fun – check the after-movie and see for yourself.

• In January, we were named as “One to Watch” in the 2017/2018 edition of the European Business Awards. This means we made it to a list of companies that demonstrated exceptional achievement in innovation, business success, and ethics.
• A few months later, we won the Workplace and People Development award in this competition for Romania. Thus, we were acknowledged as the best employer in Romania and made the local news.
• To flex our development muscles, we organized our first internal hackathon in April. The event brought together 30 colleagues working in 7 teams from our two offices in Oradea and Cluj-Napoca for one day. The event theme was caring, so the winners donated the prize money to charities they care about. Read more about the hackathon here.

• We didn’t forget about the testers. They challenged their skills over the third edition of Qubiz Testing Challenge.

Because we have a thing for bike rides, we organized the second edition of Qubiz Bike Ride. The event raised almost 5000 RON for two educational programs implemented by Fundatia Comunitara Oradea. Recently, Qubiz Bike Ride earned us a nomination at the Civic Society Gala Oradea, in the CSR category. Read more about the event here.

• To support one of our colleague’s cause and to continue the tradition, we attended the Swimathon in Oradea for the 5th year in a row. This year, our colleagues’ kids got involved, too.

• We also worked hard this year. Not only did we earn new certifications, but we also expanded our tech stack. We successfully shipped an AR/VR HoloLens project at the beginning of the year and added C++ capabilities. Also, we constantly invest in researching new technologies like blockchain, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.
• We started work for 9 new clients. All in all, we worked on over 32 projects this year, logging more than 100 sprints. What’s more, we celebrated our 8-years working relationship with Leger des Heils.
• In September, we signed a strategic partnership with Sioux, a Dutch tech company centered on cutting-edge technologies and innovation. This partnership enables us to deliver more, faster and to strengthen our shared Big Data, IoT and Cloud expertise. Read more about it here.
• We got the event bug after CeBit last year, so we attended a few dedicated events this year: the Intelligent Health Summit in Basel (Switzerland), the IoT Solutions World Congress in Barcelona and the German IT Leader Congress in Dusseldorf.

• Soft skills are important too. We’ve attended about 10 training sessions on various topics: how to give better presentations, how to give feedback and many others.
• Bridging the gap between theory and practice is one of our ongoing initiatives. This year, we continued giving presentations in high schools and universities. The latter is an ongoing project, each month we’ll be giving a presentation at the University of Oradea on specific topics.
• Overall, we had 4 internships at our office in Oradea – 3 for software development and one for business intelligence. This meant more than 25 interns, many of which have become our full-time colleagues.
• Also, we got involved in iXperiment, the startup accelerator for high-school students. Our CEO – Marcel gave a presentation on innovation. Right now, it’s fingers crossed for all the kids – may the best project win!

• We had 3 presentations at Oradea Tech Hub: Voice recognition applications in healthcare, Building a flexible IoT prototype for data collection and Computer vision in mixed reality with HoloLens.
• We sponsored our first meetup in Cluj-Napoca. Last month, we got together with about 50 C++ developers at Urania Palace for food, drinks, and a few cool presentations.

Because we like to hang out as a team, we got together for 4 quiz nights to see which one of us is most knowledgeable in movies, music, general knowledge, and logic. We also recharged our batteries over team-building sessions and various celebrations.

We also like to keep fit, so we’re regulars at running competitions. This year we attended Digi Running Day Oradea, Color Run, Oradea Night Run and Crosul Companiilor in Cluj-Napoca.

• In Cluj-Napoca , we’ve added an extension to our office there. However, by the time construction was ready, our team had already outgrown it. So we rented a second office in Cluj-Napoca on Plopilor Street.
• We’re working on a new office in Oradea, designed to host a bigger team. Our new office will have two buildings and one of them will be ready early next year.
• Overall, our team grew by 24%. This means we’re now a team of more than 190 people, 120 in Oradea and 71 in Cluj-Napoca. The best part about this is that we’ve also kept our turnover rate lower than 10%, which is well below the industry average.

There’s a saying – Time flies when you’re having fun. We’d add that time flies when you have fun and when you work hard.Even if 2018 was an important year, we’re looking forward to seeing what 2019 has in store for us.Hope your year was awesome as ours. Happy holidays and a Happy New Year!